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Didn't they do this last year? I seem to remember it was on sale at the stores after 5pm and the pre-orders were not delivered until Saturday. I remember that Bestbuy did not receive their shipment
until 10am on Saturday also. Or am I wrong?
 
Why 5 pm? Because the nightly national news is at 5:30-6:30 pm depending on where you live and they will have footage of both the huge day long lines as well as the happy first buyer rushing from the store.
 
Didn't they do this last year? I seem to remember it was on sale at the stores after 5pm and the pre-orders were not delivered until Saturday. I remember that Bestbuy did not receive their shipment
until 10am on Saturday also. Or am I wrong?

Not sure when preorders were delivered last year, but I do remember that at the stores, it went on sale in the morning, around 8 or 9 am. I went to the local Apple store, took a look at the lines, went to eat breakfast, then came back around noonish to pick up my pre-reserved iPad.
 
Didn't they do this last year? I seem to remember it was on sale at the stores after 5pm and the pre-orders were not delivered until Saturday. I remember that Bestbuy did not receive their shipment
until 10am on Saturday also. Or am I wrong?

Nope. I got my iPad in the morning when it was released last year. The only time I remember standing in line at night for something was the for 3GS because I had to work.
 
I guess an evening release guarantees more lines as there's more chance of people standing on line after work... which then looks better to the rest of the world and the media. Cynical?? :)

Plus I'm guessing Apple must be confident that they have supplies to meet the demand.
 
Plus I'm guessing Apple must be confident that they have supplies to meet the demand.

if they were confident they have supplies, they'd allow pre-orders and allow stores to sell it at 5am instead of 5pm. Apple store closes at 9pm. That gives people a smaller window to get to the store for launch day and get one. If they had an abundance and were sure of their supplies, they would do it in the mornings where more people would be in and out of the store all day.

And for the notion of 5-6pm is typically the time for news stations... news stations never sleep and they also have a man-love for Apple products. If stations are out at 3-4am for Black Friday deals, you know they're out there for an Apple launch, regardless of the time.

Apple are media sluts, and that works in their favor. I'm curious to see if the switch is flipped for the website to start selling at 5pm (EST/Pacific or what).
 
if they were confident they have supplies, they'd allow pre-orders and allow stores to sell it at 5am instead of 5pm. Apple store closes at 9pm. That gives people a smaller window to get to the store for launch day and get one. If they had an abundance and were sure of their supplies, they would do it in the mornings where more people would be in and out of the store all day.

So... for example, when Tiger was released and they opened the stores at 5 or 6 at night, that was because they were worried about selling out?

Yeah, right.

And for the notion of 5-6pm is typically the time for news stations... news stations never sleep and they also have a man-love for Apple products.

Is that what I said? I said that encouraging larger queues by making it a later release would be more newsworthy.

Selling from 10 in the morning won't necessarily see such large queues as starting sales at a more "sociable" hour when people are leaving work.

Now how about you stop putting words in my mouth?
 
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